The Maldives. Just Stunning!

The Maldives. Stunning. 

Sadly, our time in The Maldives is coming to an end. This is not only our last night here, but our last night of our entire Honeymoon/Holiday. What a truly amazing and fantastic experience! I shall do another post to summarise the entire trip, but for now, I must blog about our time here in The Maldives. Paradise!

When we arrived at the airport, we were met by the holiday rep and shown to our boat transfer. We were lucky in the fact that we had a speedboat all to ourselves, and it was great whizzing across the water at 50mph towards our destination and seeing all these Islands and Lagoons go whizzing by. It took almost an hour to get to our resort, and it was a great trip! We were met with the obligatory cold towel and taken to reception to check in. There was a fabulous sunset as we arrived as well, the the sun a fire red ball on the horizon!
 
The following day, we woke to a beautiful sight. Our sea villa was about 100ft from the beach, over the water in a shallow lagoon, with the clearest, bluest water I have ever seen! Simply stunning! After breakfast, Ju and I wasted no time in getting our mask & snorkels out and swimming in the clear lagoon. We saw sooo many fish, as well a a bloody HUGE stingray, it was at least 6foot in length, and we were a bit cautious with it as it was the same kind that speared Steve Irwin! We ventured further out and saw more reef sharks and a smaller ray. After lunch, on the way back to the villa, we saw. A sea turtle in the lagoon by our villa, so I told Ju to watch where it went whilst I ran in, grabbed the camera and dove into the water to photograph it, not realising my new watch was still on my wrist and was not waterproof!! ( it still works) I managed to get a couple of shots before he swam away!!

Most of our time here has been spent in the water, swimming in the lagoon. On the West side of the island, it is about 4 foot deep for  about 100m out to sea, then there is a reef and it is a sheer drop to 20- 25 metres. Again, AMAZING to snorkel in and see a myriad of different types and sizes of fish! Another thing was, every night, up by the dive school, at the end of the pier, they would turn on 2 big floodlights and at 9pm, there would suddenly appear some Manta Rays, attracted by the lights and the plankton. Sometimes there were 6 or 7 of them, dancing around in the water, just 4 foot below. Truly and amazing thing to see. they even do a night dive where you can dive in a swim with them!!
Ju managed to overcome her fears and go SCUBA diving. She did a SCUBA dive course and is now a licences scuba diver. She just needs to do 2 more dives at 18m and then she will be open water qualified!! She hated all the practical and skills testing, but once she was diving, she loved it!! I am so proud of her for doing it!! I did both Dives with Ju and I also did another one, to 20m with an instructor, which was great. Another vertical sea wall with everything except sharks! There were Rays, octopus, eels, shoals of fish, big ones, small ones and even a dolphin escort for the boat on the way back. I love diving now!!! And so does Ju!!
I must also add, that we took an all inclusive package for our stay here, which was a good thing- and a bad thing! Good in the fact that breakfast, lunch and dinner, As well as drinks were all included and there was a huge buffet selection available at every meal time and the food was great. 
Bad because there was TOO MUCH good food and all the weight we had lost on the holiday, we have probably put on in this last week!!!
We both absolutely love The Maldives and will definitely come again, and this was one of the cheaper resorts as well! So good knows how great one of the more expensive places will be!!!
It is our last night now, and I am sat here, waiting for the sunset (which are always stunning), whilst Ju does her hair. We have a nice candlelight romantic dinner booked this evening.  We are both sad, not only to be leaving this beautiful paradise, but also because it is the end of our wonderful adventure. 
We have been to so many different places, seen so many different things, met so many different people and done so many new and exciting things along the way. 
It was 7 weeks ago today that we left for Hong Kong, and when I think about it, it seems soo long ago, yet also, it seems like the time has flown by!! 
No idea when I will actually be able to post this, as the Internet voucher has been used up!